Ten years ago, Annette Thomas - a descendant of Benjamin and Ursula Adair (who died in the early 1900’s) - came to Westport to learn more about her ancestors.
Our town had no official record of her family.
Then, during the pandemic, researchers at the Westport Museum (WM) decided to catalog the headstones in the Evergreen Cemetery, in which many notable Westporters are interred.
In the southwest corner, they noticed something unusual: a separate area with larger stones engraved with endearing epitaphs belonging to the family of Benjamin and Ursula Adair.
Who were they? They were clearly wealthy landowners, so why is there no record of them?
According to WM Director Ranim Ganeshram, “A lot of the documentation that we would normally see in families and people and systems of European decent, we don’t see for African Americans.”
After a great deal of sleuthing, WM cobbled together their remarkable history:
Around 1826, Benjamin Adair was born in South Carolina. His birth records don’t exist, suggesting he was enslaved. In 1850, records indicate that he had moved to New York City and was working as a waiter in the Washington Square home of Morris Ketchum.
Morris Ketchum was a wealthy financier and philanthropist of Manhattan and Westport. He was partner in a firm that became Rogers Locomotive Works, one of the largest manufacturing companies of steam locomotives in the US, and he was director of the Illinois Central Railroad. Rumor has it that, as ICR director, he threw locomotive orders to Rogers.
Rumor also has it that Morris was the business partner of Frederick Law Olmstead, the venerated landscape architect of Central Park whose bridges-and-tunnel system inspired our country’s highway system. Fred landscaped Morris’s enormous Hockanum estate, a Westport property that stretched from Cross Highway at Roseville to Lyon’s Plains Road and a section of Main Street. On Sundays, Morris would fling open his gates to let residents have a gander at it.
Morris promoted Benjamin to coachman and moved him and his wife, Ursula Mingo, a woman of African and Shinnecock descent, from Long Island to Westport. In 1852 Benjamin purchased a home for his family on Franklin Street.
Remember, Morris was a railroad man. Is it a coincidence that our train station, which didn’t exist when Benjamin moved to Franklin Street, now runs directly across it? All we know is that Benjamin sold his property to the New York and New Haven Railroad for roughly 300% more than what he paid. In 1877, he bought nine acres of farm property from Morris at what is currently exit 42 for the Merritt (and one of the most unappealing confluences of intersecting streets in modern history.)
Turns out, Benjamin, while still working as Morris’s coachman, with his son Samuel, proved to be prosperous farmers. The agricultural census of 1880 showed the farm produced five tons of hay, 40 bushels of Indian corn, and 30 bushels of potatoes. The cows produced 300 pounds of butter, the chickens produced 50 dozen eggs.
Upon his death, Morris bequeathed Benjamin $1,000 - almost $29,000 today - writing in his will, “Benjamin Adair, long a faithful servant of mine, the sum of one thousand dollars, to be paid to him within one year after my decease”
Benjamin died of tuberculosis in 1891. He left a valuable farm upon which his wife, daughter Emily, and cousin Hester continued to live, with the understanding he wanted the estate kept intact.
By the 1930’s his granddaughters were struggling to pay the taxes. In 1937 the Merritt Parkway was nearly complete and barreling through the outskirts of their front yard. Though the proximity of this highway should have decreased the land’s value, the town increased it from $4,644 to $7,740 and slapped them with an enormous tax hike. The value of their neighbors’ land didn’t change.
Despite their efforts, by 1946 the Adair women could no longer shoulder the hefty tax. Due to a debt of $828.60, or $12,700 today, Westport took possession of their farm and sold it at auction.
Today, the area near their home is known as “Glynn’s Corner,” named for a white man who owned a few acres across from the Adair’s property.
After their research, WM notified Annette and her grateful family of their story. “For us, it’s our responsibility that history itself is told in its entirety and that no one is erased in the picture,” says Ramin. Further, in American history, “it took work to take people out of the story.”
Benjamin’s descendants are far-flung now, many of them became teachers and one, Mika Mingo, an internationally acclaimed dancer in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
The Adair’s home still exists, though it’s now unrecognizable.
WestportHistory.org
Exhibit sponsored by Brown’s Monument Work
“For us, it’s our responsibility that history itself is told in its entirety and that no one is erased in the picture. Further, in American history, “it took work to take people out of the story.” - Ramin
